1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools

<a href="http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;language&#x2F;document&#x2F;1895exam.asp</a> is relevant. Anything that is memorization based (which a lot of that test is), that you haven&#x27;t studied recently will be difficult.<p>I can recall, in the 7th grade, struggling for a couple nights to be able to identify all of the european and Mediterranean countries for an exam. It took a couple hard nights of cramming, but by the time the exam came along, it was a walk in the park.<p>But ask me today to place Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Albania on a map - and I&#x27;d be at a loss.

I don&#x27;t know if I have a disadvantage or an advantage when it comes to learning. I can never memorize a mass of stuff. Instead, I have to find a pattern in it and use the pattern to reconstruct it. For example, I could never remember random formulas for e.g. solving the quadratic equation or taking a derivative, but once I figured out how they worked, I could use them right away. This is why I decided to study physics in college: physics has very few pieces of info you have to just memorize.<p>The downside, besides having a horrible time remembering some chemical formula, or the year of the French revolution, is that I also cannot use a formula correctly unless I know how it is derived. I must walk every step of the proof before I can use any part of the formula, otherwise my brain simply refuses to see it correctly.<p>Interestingly enough, I am blessed with very good memory for situations and associations. I can tell you exactly how many olives were in the martini I ordered in July 2008 (3), or quote lines from my favorite shows at every occasion. I just can&#x27;t remember what my brain seems classify as &quot;generally useless facts&quot;.

For reference -- this is Bullitt County, Kentucky. It is just south of Louisville, and is now a part of the greater Louisville metropolitan area. At this point in the county&#x27;s history, it had a population of approximately 10,000 people. The Louisville &amp; Nashville railroad passed through the county and had several stops, plus some fairly good quality roads linked the county with Louisville and other towns in the region, so the area was rural, but not particularly isolated. Its school district was well established but generally stopped at the 8th grade. The school system was a collection of various small schoolhouses located around the county. In short, it was probably representative of most of rural America in the early 20th century.<p>As a graduate of the public schools in that county, I can&#x27;t say that I received the same rigorous education that the test here indicates was once the standard. It&#x27;s very strange to me to see this pop up now and then on the internet as an example of &quot;look at the standards we once held our children to&quot;.

This has been a problem for a long time... for many decades education has focused only on rote memorization, to the detriment of all.<p>&quot;We believe that in the passage of time the neglect of these books in the twentieth century will be regarded as an aberration, and not, as it is sometimes called today, a sign of progress. We think that progress, and progress in education in particular, depends on the incorporation of the ideas and images included in this set in the daily lives of all of us, from childhood through old age. In this view the disappearance of great books from education and from the reading of adults constitutes a calamity. In this view education in the West has been steadily deteriorating; the rising generation has been deprived of its birthright; the mess of pottage it has received in exchange has not been nutritious; adults have come to lead lives comparatively rich in material comforts and very poor in moral, intellectual, and spiritual tone.&quot;<p>-- Preface to &quot;Great Books of the Western World&quot;, &quot;The Great Conversation Vol. 1&quot; (1951)<p><a href="http://archive.org/stream/greatconversatio030336mbp/greatconversatio030336mbp_djvu.txt" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;stream&#x2F;greatconversatio030336mbp&#x2F;greatcon...</a>

For 7th grade British History we had to know all the rulers, in order, from Charlemagne (or was it Charles Martel aka Charles the Hammer) to present day (1980s). Obviously I didn&#x27;t learn it.<p>Funny now, I learned more after watching The Tudors, Wolf Hall, and The White Queen, than I did it that awful class. Wasn&#x27;t all bad though. We got to make our own Medieval weapons (I made a Morning Star) and had a tour book of the London Dungeon (pretty gruesome) hanging on the classroom wall; won&#x27;t find that these days.

Um, other than the grammar portion this seems pretty much what 8th graders were expected to know in 1999 when I was in Washington?

Funny that the Truant Officer&#x27;s name is on the bottom along with the board of education.

So, do I get extra points for pointing out typos?